


high blood drumming on your skin it's so tight (you feel my heat, I'm just a moment behind)

by Amberdreams, MarcellaBianca



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Bottom Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Dom/sub Undertones, Eventual Smut, M/M, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Precious Peter Parker, Rimming, Sam Wilson is a Gift, Sexy Times, Shameless Smut, Size Kink, Steve Rogers is Not Hydra, Top Bucky Barnes, Werewolf Bucky Barnes, Wet & Messy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 04:23:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19041058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amberdreams/pseuds/Amberdreams, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarcellaBianca/pseuds/MarcellaBianca
Summary: “Hang on, I remember hearing about this from dear old Dad, but he never showed me any of the files.”“Well that’s at least something he did right,” Nat said with a shrug. “This isn’t exactly the type of stuff a SHIELD agent should show their kid.”“You don’t know my Dad at all if you think that.” Tony ambled around the table so he could lean over Steve’s shoulder. He let out a small disbelieving sound. “Werewolves? Please tell me this is about werewolves. Oh my God.”SHIELD adds a new recruit to the team. New recruit is James Barnes. James Barnes is a werewolf. James Barnes makes Steve Rogers feel funny in his pants area.





	high blood drumming on your skin it's so tight (you feel my heat, I'm just a moment behind)

**Author's Note:**

> So. Uh. I regret nothing? 
> 
> All of this is due to the incredible Amber, whose art immediately put this fic in my mind. And then I had a sudden, insistent desire to make Steve into the cockslut of my dreams. And then everything grew feelings. And then this happened. 
> 
> So excited to make this my contribution to the 2019 Captain America Reverse Big Bang! Enjoy!
> 
> (Note, there is art embedded in this fic. It's not explicit, but one of the pieces is of Buckaroo in very tiny underpants. So, there's that.)

****

 

**then.**

 

_He stood tall, amongst the trees, in a small clearing. The night was silent, waiting._

_Yearning._

_Beckoning._

_Seducing._

_Above his head, the moon turned his way._

_Lit the way, lit him up._

**_Light me up, Eternal._ **

_Tendons popped and twisted, but it never hurt before. Before, when he could run wild and free with his pack, under the cover of a Brooklyn night, the transformation was as effortless as slipping into warm water, diving under the waves and emerging soaked and new. But now? Now it still felt like the wave was crashing down over his head. Still invigorating, but shocking where it once was comfortable. It was a home he was still trying to recognize._

_His furs, so silver they were almost blue under the right angle of moonlight, ruffling in the easy breeze. Nothing could touch him when he roamed under Her calm gaze. He could take care of the young in his pack, battle any rival who tried to overtake his rule, wonder if there could possibly be a mate out there, waiting for him. Maybe they would have the Moon Gift, maybe not. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the moment of freedom he found when he broke into an easy run through the parks and the empty side streets._

_They’d heard about Hydra, of course. Rumors spread easy and quick amongst the packs of New York. There was a clear fear; he could see it amongst his people. No amount of reassuring words or acts of selflessness could change that. Once fear took hold, it was hard to shake._

_“What should we do?” one of the younger female pups asked him. Later, he'd remember - that was his sister. Rebecca._

_He put a hand on her shoulder. “We survive.”_

_Even when it was just him and his family, when others tried to run from Hydra, he never gave up. Brooklyn was his home. He would never leave it. If Hydra came, destroyed all he held so dear, he would avenge the loss._

_When Hydra got him, they perverted his Gift. Magicked away what made it easy. Took his peace, took him from his family, and made him a living hell._

_Now, his pack was gone. Demolished in the wake of Hydra trying to find him. He never even had time to mourn, just one mighty, grief-stricken howl when he finally escaped and tore holes in the necks of all who tried to subdue him._

_In the three years after he broke away, he tried so hard to make it like it was, when he was happy and protected and in the arms of the mighty clan. He made his little den in Siberia as hospitable as he could. He rarely left his furs. If Hydra came for him, he needed to be ready at all times._

_The good men came for him this way, amongst the trees, in a small clearing. The night was silent, waiting._

_Waiting for him to come in from the cold._

_Inside the truck, he could smell the threat of silver. He curled up on his side, waiting for the killing stroke._

_“Not so fast, Winter Soldier,” came a voice, male, rough and weary._

_There was something in the male voice that made the wolf turn with questioning eyes to the one eye of the speaker, the other obscured by an eyepatch._

_“It’s okay,” the man said. “We have other plans for you.”_  


**now.**

 

“Any idea what Fury wants?” Clint said around a big yawn, hands latched onto a mug of coffee bigger than his own head.

“I don’t know,” Nat said.

“Even if you did, you wouldn’t say so,” Sam responded, pouring himself a cup. Nat merely shrugged, as if to confirm the obvious.

“There’s been some stuff circulating about Hydra operatives, maybe coming in from the cold,” Steve said, already seated at the table, steam rising off his own cup (black, one sugar). He offered a smile to Wanda as she took her own seat next to him. Since she joined the Avengers, even though now she had Vision, Steve looked at her like the little sister he’d never had. Sure, Steve’d had the kids in the neighborhood back in Brooklyn, but Wanda was different. Had the same fight, though.

“Man, do you ever take a day off?” Sam joked, flopping down next to him.

“Forgive me for wanting to do my job right.” But there was a grin in Steve’s voice.

“Would you know what to do with it?” Wanda asked, stirring some brown sugar into her coffee.

Steve sat back from the table and evaluated. Time to get some work done on those portraits he’d finally started back on. Time to finally get better at cooking, so Sam wouldn’t make fun of him anymore (it was all in good fun, but dammit, Steve didn’t want to be bad at anything).

At the same time….

“I wouldn’t know what to do with too much time away from this,” he admitted.

Nat let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like her version of a laugh. “No. No you wouldn’t,” she said, her uniquely rough voice coming off as the breath of a sigh. “None of us would.”

“Tony would.”

“Stark is a different sort of animal, Sam.”

“What, because he can appreciate being able to take some time off?”

“He thinks ‘time off’ means building twenty robots,” Nat said, tilting her head the way she did when people weren’t truly listening. “You know as well as we all do - Tony wouldn’t know actual time off if it pulsar blasted him in the throat.”

Sam just smiled and flicked a piece of bagel at Nat’s forearm.

Hill and Fury came in, effectively stopping any chance of an Avengers food fight. They both carried giant files of their own, exploding with paperwork.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” Hill said now, jaw set. In the years Steve had worked with her, he wouldn’t doubt her ability to stay unflappable in a nuclear attack. Hell, she had dealt with aliens invading New York without blinking. She set her file down on the table in front of Steve with the delicacy of a man stacking fish at a market. “Should we start now, or wait for Tony to get here?”

Steve didn’t respond, merely opened the manila envelope to the first page. His heart clenched in his chest. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope,” Hill said. “I guess we’re starting without him, then-”

“I’m here, I’m here,” Tony blustered, bursting through the door, slipping off his sunglasses. “God forbid Dum-E leave me alone for two seconds. I don’t remember programming him to be codependent.”

He looked around the room, at the suddenly quiet faces, and his gaze landed on Steve, who was still gripping the first page. “What’s the deal?”

“Project White Wolf,” Steve said.

Fury and Hill both looked up at that, Hill with her immaculately groomed eyebrows up near her hairline.

“Of course you’d know about this,” Fury said, with all the weight he normally said things like that. Like someone was looping a millstone around his words and dragging them down. He sat down. “It’s upper level clearance. Only the highest ranking military had exposure to this during the war.”

“Hmm?” Clint said, craning his neck to look at the files. Steve turned the paper around, exposing its blurry photocopies of a figure on all fours in the snow. Despite the black and white graininess, the photo seemed to glint light off one of the creature’s legs.

“Hang on, I remember hearing about this from dear old Dad, but he never showed me any of the files.”

“Well that’s at least something he did right,” Nat said with a shrug. “This isn’t exactly the type of stuff a Shield agent should show their kid.”

“You don’t know my Dad at all if you think that, Nat.” Tony ambled around the table so he could lean over Steve’s shoulder. He let out a small excited sound. “ _Werewolves_ ? Please tell me this is about werewolves. Oh my _God_.”

“They’re humans that were experimented on by Hydra until they exhibited animal-like behaviors, Tony,” Steve said through gritted teeth.

Next to him, he could feel Wanda growing very still.

“So, _werewolves._ ”

“They had their DNA reorganized so they could shapeshift.”

“Well.” Fury tilted his head, lip pursed. “I don’t know if that is entirely accurate in this case, Rogers.”

“Even if they were originally a werewolf, it still counts if Hydra perverted them,” Steve replied, with heat. “Zola made them do things that were unimaginable. Turned them into monsters.”

“Monsters, hm?”

Steve whipped around to face Wanda, feeling the color drain from his face. Wanda sat placidly, holding one of the photos in her hand of Arnim Zola. “Wanda. I’m not saying-”

“No, I understand.” There was a strange look on Wanda’s face. “They took someone, or a lot of someones, and made them into something else for their own purposes. Sometimes, they were monstrous.” She raised her hand, and let red sparkles fizz between her fingers. “It is what it is.”

Steve shut his mouth, which had been hanging open, halfway to either an apology or an excuse. He realized now was not the time for either.

“Can someone explain the case, please?” Sam slid the folder away from Steve to inspect the rest of the case file. Steve kept the first photo set. He didn’t meet Wanda’s eye.

“Hydra was running an experiment lab during the war.” He used his Captain voice, the one that insured everyone would listen to him. It worked - Tony found a seat across the table and leaned in like a kid at primary school. “Right after I liberated the troop at Azzano, started working with the Howling Commandos, we got a tip on what was going on with a subset of Nazi experiments. Everyone here knows about Dr. Mengele, right?”

Sam scrunched up his face. “The one who separated the gas chamber lines in concentration camps, right?”

“The Angel of Death,” Wanda said. “The one who took Jewish, Romani, any child he could get his hands on at Auschwitz. He experimented on them. Claimed it was for science. Bullshit science for bullshit purposes.” Her voice was cold steel. “He killed my people.”

“Yeah. Take his pseudoscience, and combine it with Nazi offbrand mysticism.” Steve spat out the words, rotten fruit. “They wanted animals with the strength of someone with my serum. But they didn’t really know how to do it without knockoffs of Erskine’s formula. They ended up killing a lot of men, women, and children. We saw a few of them at a camp we liberated. Their bodies were…” Steve closed his eyes. “I’ve seen a lot of shit in my day, and that stuff comes close to the worst.”

He let that linger in the dead silence before continuing. “Anyway. There were several labs. That was just the first one.”

“Cut off one head,” Nat murmured.

Steve nodded. “We got a lot of them, up and down the European Theatre. We were getting close to destroying the biggest one before, well.”

“Before you Capsicle’d yourself?”

“Tony,” Nat didn’t even make eye contact with Tony, merely let the warning fall out of her mouth while flicking through the pages. Her face betrayed zero surprise as she perused the files.

“After that,” Steve continued, and if Nat didn’t want to glare at Tony, he sure would, “the Howlies, they still tried to get through, to break into those vaults. They eventually were forced to stop. There were rumors trying to pick those locks would trigger a gas that could make your body melt from the inside out.”

“Like _Indiana Jones_?” Sam asked. “Was Hydra like the Ark?”

“The Ark was like Hydra,” Steve replied.

“Hold up, when did Rogers watch _Indiana Jones_? And why was I not there? Why do you guys never invite me to movie night?”

“Shut up, Tony,” Nat said.

“So you’re saying that this didn’t work, until one day, it did?”

Steve sat back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest to keep all the emotions right where nobody could see them. “Yeah, there had been whispers. Rumors.”

Names thrown to the wind, of animals with giant maws and dead eyes and stiletto teeth, ripping men apart in the night. Retreating to their secret dens, only to emerge the next time all the hungrier.

He swallowed. “The Howlies got close a few times, but every time they just kept moving, until the war was over.”

“I’m seriously annoyed. When were you going to tell us that there were actual werewolves involved in this?” Tony looked positively incandescent. “This is so _cool_.”

“I wanted to ask about it before, but I was a little busy,” Steve gritted out. Once he quit trying to wrap his head around the fact that it was in fact 2011, not 1945, and the buildings were higher and the skies were closer and everything he knew was a vague memoriam, a funeral for a life he’d never gotten to live - once he got a little close to reconciling all of _that_ \- aliens fucking poured from the sky.

“Anyway,” Fury said, a tone in his voice implying _back to the task at hand, you children_ , “The reason we’re bringing this up at _all_ is because something has been discovered in Siberia, near one of Hydra’s old training facilities. Well, some _one_. We think he was one of the only success stories out of this experiment program, mainly because...well.” He gestured to the file.

“He was already a werewolf,” Wanda breathed. Fury nodded.

“How long was he in Siberia?” Steve asked.

“Seventy years, living away from Hydra for three. Zola brought him out when there was need for an accelerated body count, but never for an extended period of time. They worried we’d find him, probably. They kept him locked up with silver chains most of the time, so he couldn’t shift unless they took them off.”

“The Winter Soldier,” Nat murmured.

A knot of dread tightened Steve’s guts. “You know that name, too?”

The look Nat gave him could only be described as withering, stirred up with a soupcon of pity. “No,” she drawled. “I’m just excellent at coming up with villain monikers.” She stabbed a finger at the file, now open to reveal a clearer photo; this time, a security camera screengrab. “He’s been credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years. One of which just so happened to be when I was new to Shield.”

Steve leaned in, and although the photo was still nowhere near sharp, he’d recognize the long, deadly lines of Natasha anywhere. “Where is this?”

“Odessa. I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. Knocked us off the road.” She stood, and peeled up a corner of her t-shirt. Sam, sitting next to her, winced as the group took in the long, raised scar just left of her navel. “I was covering him, so the Soldier sideswiped me. In his furs.”

“How did we not know about this earlier?”

“I don’t show just anyone my stomach, Stark, not unless they buy me a drink first,” Nat deadpanned before sitting back down and pulling her shirt back over her stomach. “All I’m saying is, this guy is a ghost story. He’s told to kids in the Red Room so they’ll have nightmares about what would happen if they escaped. If he’s here -”

“He has been cooperating with SHIELD since we brought him in,” Fury interjected, motioning to the rest of the files.

Steve flipped through them. They seemed legit. The Winter Soldier had been through physical and cognitive therapy, working through what Steve could only imagine was _miles_ of brainwashing. If he was ready to come out so soon, he must have had a good head start. “He was on his own for three years, you said?”

“When we found him in Siberia he had broken all of his handler’s codes, not before breaking a few necks. See the metal arm?” Fury tapped the photo. “They gave it to him after he fell from a train during a mission. Crushed the bone so bad it had to be amputated up to the shoulder. It was a bullshit adamantium prototype until a few years before he broke free, when they rebuilt it from stolen vibranium, and they upgraded the security on it too. If he broke ranks, all one of his handlers had to do was say ‘Sputnik’ and the entire system self-destructed. So he destroyed them first, and waited it out.”

Steve let out a long, low whistle. “He broke the code himself?”

“Broke it in the first year.” Even Fury couldn’t help but sound impressed.

“How long have you had him?” Clint said, leaning over Nat’s shoulder to look at the file.

“Four months. He’s been living away from the compound, in private. We couldn’t risk bringing him to the team until we made sure he was fully deprogrammed. And we didn’t know if he even would want that.”

“You’ve had a werewolf hanging out at SHIELD for months? Nobody lets me do anything _fun_ ,” Tony groused.

“I’m pretty sure playing with nanotech all day _is_ your idea of fun, Tony,” Steve said.

“Obviously, but this?” Tony waved the file dangerously close to Sam’s cup of coffee; Sam picked it up and instinctively arched away from the line of fire. “This is so much cooler. We’ve got a legit Wolf Man on our premises. A wolf man with a metal arm.”

“The ‘Wolf Man’ has a name, Stark,” Fury said, eye squinting. “His name is-”

“Barnes.”

The entire group shifted at a gravelly, worn-in voice that sounded like it had been driven over thirty miles of bad road. They collectively turned to see a man standing in the doorway, leaning slightly against the frame. In another life, maybe, it would’ve been seen as a louche, flirtatious stance, but on this man it looked haunted and unsure.

“My name is James Barnes,” he said again, this time a little more courageous, some lustrous quality painted over the metal scorch of his voice. He was dressed simply, in a SHIELD issue long-sleeve shirt that looked double-washed and soft to the touch, or maybe that was just a side effect of the man in the shirt, who looked rumpled and freshly showered. There were thousands of years of pain behind his impossibly blue eyes, which scanned the group in the way an expertly trained soldier looks over a mark, but it looked more like a reflex than a threat. His jaw, angular and lean, was clenched just this side of too tight, and if his lips were relaxed instead of pursed, Steve knew, they would be nearly bee-stung in their fullness.

And when Steve’s eyes trailed down the line of the man’s arm, he was quick to note the gleaming silver of his relaxed left hand. Most of the pictures in the file had the Soldier in all form of combative aggression, so to see him at rest was jarring, to say the least. Here, the Soldier - _Barnes_ \- looked downright rumpled, almost as if he’d been rustled away from a den made of sheets to come to the meeting.

Fury stood. “This is James Barnes. Codename Winter Soldier of Project White Wolf. And, if all goes well, our newest Agent.”

“Hold up.” Sam lifted a hand like he was in primary school. “We’re gonna put a werewolf on the team?”

“Technically we are putting an extremely well trained spy and soldier who possesses more intel on Hydra in his little finger than we’ve been able to find in years of searching, but hey,” Fury cocked his head, “if you want to call him a werewolf, sure. Let’s see what happens when you do that.”

“Nothing’s going to happen,” the man - Barnes - said quietly. “I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore. Unless they hurt other people.”

His eyes darted to the end of the table, where Nat was sitting. He said something softly in Russian. Nat lifted one eyebrow, and responded in kind. Whatever she said must have been reassuring, because Barnes released tension in his shoulders and slid off the wall to walk a little closer to the group. He moved slowly, but carefully, his training belying any amount of shyness in his face.

Steve couldn’t take his eyes off him.

Barnes was barely in the room proper before Tony raised his own hand.

“Do you have a question, Stark?” Fury asked wearily.

“Yes. About four hundred.” He turned to Barnes with glee. “Do you only turn on the full moon?”

“No. I can control it.”

“If you ask him to do it right now, I’m pretty sure we will all reprogram Dum-E to slap your face off,” Nat murmured.

“You don’t have the codes for Dum-E, and that dies with me.”

“That death will move up quite a few years if you ask Barnes to shift in here,” Nat said, a warning lacing her voice.

“No, it’s all right.” Barnes sighed, like he’d heard all of these things a thousand times before, and shifted his weight. The entire room shifted with him. “I can talk about it.

“I was actually born in Shelbyville, Indiana, but I moved to New York with my family when I was fifteen. I was twenty when I hit my maturity, in wolf terms.”

“Hold the fuck up. You were a wolf _before_ Hydra got to you?”

“Yes. Didn’t Fury tell you? I heard there was a whole information session on SHIELD’s new _project_.” Barnes shot Tony a look that wasn’t even that harsh, but Tony instantly quailed under it. “I come from a family of them. I’m what’s called a ‘natural wolf.’ And when I was twenty-five, twenty-six, I was captured by Zola and his team.”

His jaw twitched. “Apparently they had been doing _research_ on me. None of their experiments on human soldiers had worked, so, they had Hydra see if we actually existed, and just go from there. We’d heard about them, tried to run, but…” He spread his hands out, face twisted up in amusement. “Surprise?”

“The arm is Hydra tech still,” Nat said.  

“Yes, ma’am, although SHIELD wants to give me a new one once I’m settled in a bit more, whatever that means,” Barnes said, mouth still in a grimace masking itself as a smile. “Vibranium upgrade about ten years ago. At first there was silver deep inside of it, but.” He rubbed his flesh and bone hand across one knee. “They kinda forgot I can’t handle that.”

Steve flipped to a new page in the file. It was all there, including gruesome photos of the havoc the silver had done to Barnes’ system. With the prosthetic off, the stump at his shoulder was covered in vicious deep lines that spread towards his heart.

There was more talking, and more debating, and a little bit of gleeful questioning about how hard Barnes could bite someone (dammit, Tony) but all Steve could do, as he gripped the files so hard he bent the paper, was wonder one thing.

Why did the werewolf/soldier/spy have to be so goddamn good looking?

This was going to be a disaster.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“This is a disaster,” Steve moaned, standing in Sam’s kitchen but feeling like he wanted to scrunch himself under the counter and disappear, like that wouldn’t make the countertop instantly explode.

Sam looked up from his perfectly constructed pot roast and made a face Steve had gotten used to seeing over the past few months. “If you say one thing against this dinner, my mama is going to drive here, and I don’t care how much superpowered strength you have - she will beat you into the ground. This is Mama Wilson’s recipe.”

“No. That’s not it. That looks great.” Steve slid onto the couch and scrubbed a hand across his face. “That’s not it at all.”

“You’ve been weird for a while. Weirder than normal.” Sam walked over to the oven and pulled out a tray of perfectly roasted sweet potatoes. “Was it the mission? Because that went fine.”

“No, I know it went fine.” Better than fine. Excellent, really. All the missions had been going spectacularly well since _he’d_ shown up.

“Well what’s the deal?”

“It’s Barnes,” Nat said from her perch, curled up in Sam’s squashy armchair with her phone. When Steve looked at her pleadingly, Nat just smiled like she wasn’t out to ruin Steve’s life, and went back to her Pinterest.

“Oh Jesus,” Sam said, swinging around to face the living room, still gripping the tray of food, eyes rolling so far back in his head Steve almost wanted to say they’d get stuck. “Still? _Still_ , Steven?”

“It’s under control, and don’t _Steven_ me,” Steve argued.

“Yeah, because ‘disaster’ is what everyone says when things are going just great, _Steven_.” Sam put the tray down on a towel, and returned to the main course to baste the meat. “You’ve been up Barnes’ ass from jump. Anybody with a brain can see that.”

“Well, that’s not entirely true. I’m sure the tension would ease up quite a bit if Rogers got up Barnes’s ass.”

“Really, Romanov?” Steve hated how his voice sounded when Nat talked about this. Somewhere between a whine and a despairing whisper. Like a horny cricket.

“Honestly, Steve, I’m amazed you’ve kept a lid on it this well,” Nat breezed, ignoring Steve’s existential crisis. I don’t think the rest of the team knows. I mean, Barnes obviously does, but-”

“Shut up. No he doesn’t.”

“Rogers.” Nat made a face. “He’s not stupid. He’s trained Russian operative, plus he’s got werewolf blood in his veins, and you’ve been basically sending out ‘fuck me’ pheromones his direction from the minute he got here. If you were a wolf too, you’d be knotting him on the Avengers conference room table right now. Or he’d knot you. Or however you want to do it.”

“I hate having you guys over for dinner,” Sam said, more to the Creuset than to anyone in particular.

Steve sank down further on the couch. “Like I said. Disaster.”

It had been eight months since Barnes had come in from the cold, four since he’d been exposed to the team. Three months since Steve had taken one look at the soldier who was actually a werewolf and resigned himself to the fact that he would be shamefully beating off most nights a week to the thought of steel blue eyes, soft voice, and rock hard quads.

It wasn’t like this was his _fault._

It was _Barnes’_ fault.

Barnes was a genuinely decent fellow. Kind, smart, shy. A few times, he and Steve had engaged in exceedingly polite discourse, in which Barnes was honest to god bashful and Steve’s eyeballs were squarely fixed on the small squiggles in Barnes’s hairline to avoid staring at his eyes too much.

A few times Barnes had asked him questions about Steve’s life and likes/dislikes. It was all information, Steve knew, that wouldn’t come up in any files on Captain America. Barnes seemed like he just genuinely wanted to know more about him.

(“He likes you,” Wanda said quietly to Steve as they were flipping through the channels in the common room.

Steve nearly spilled his popcorn all over his lap. “Well, um. I think we work well together. In, uh, the context of the team.”

Wanda mumbled something under her breath that Steve was positive was Sokovian for "grade A dumbass.")

So yeah, Barnes was a good man. Fundamentally decent person, by all accounts. Even Tony had to like him. “It’s hard to ask questions about him being a werewolf when he’s so goddamn earnest all the time,” he complained, more to DUM-E than to Steve as Steve watched him tinker with what Tony swore would be a good replacement for the metal arm that the team all knew was bothering Barnes more and more with each passing day.

But once they got a mission, something changed in Barnes. Gone was the somber, still man who liked to play Candy Crush and spar with Nat (which Steve watched once, and only once, before he realized if he watched it again he might get arrested for public indecency) In his place was something closer to a machine. But unlike Stark’s inventions, which were loud and obnoxious on their best days, Barnes used his day-to-day quiet to act as the team’s best sniper. Even better than Nat, Steve thought, even though there was no way in hell he’d say that.

“Did you see him today when he got that guy who nearly got the files?” he blurted out. They’d been so close to closing it out, but one Hydra agent managed to nearly get the drop on them and popped up from a hidden door in the floorboards. He was reaching for the files when Steve heard a soft pop and the guy keeled over, blood blooming from the back of his head like petals. He looked up to see Barnes, crouched on a ledge, and gave a salute. The sight of Barnes reloading was one Steve replayed over and over again during his very long, very thorough shower post-mission. “I mean, I can’t be the only one who sees shit like that and doesn’t feel something.”

“Yeah, I feel something. I feel the desire to not get murdered,” Sam grumbled.

Nat just smiled, and patted Steve’s leg in a way that on anyone else would seem unbelievably patronizing. “I think it’s kind of cute. Didn’t know you were so hard for modified soldiers.”

“I would really appreciate it if we didn’t talk about my buddy’s hard _anything_ ,” Sam grunted.

Steve spluttered. “I am not - it is not _your concern_ the level of my - my _hard_ -”

“Sure,” Nat smirked, and hoisted herself up off the couch. “Now let’s eat and try to figure out what you’re going to do about your little puppy love problem.”

“Can we not call it ‘puppy love’ when the other person in question is a werewolf?” Steve pleaded.

It wasn’t puppy love. It wasn’t even puppy _like_. It was puppy...something else. Something that probably sounded terrible and gross no matter what way Steve tried to phrase it.

Steve liked Barnes, the person. Steve genuinely liked Barnes and being around him and talking to him about things, whether that was something as mundane as a phone app or as big as a map of the underground of a Hydra facility. He thought Barnes was great to talk to, and there was a part of him that wondered what it would be like to talk to him off mission.

And Steve _also_ wanted to get sexually _annihilated_ by Barnes.

These things were not mutually exclusive.

Talking about it in his therapy sessions was a no go, either. How does one say in the middle of CBT “So we have a new member of our team who has major Hydra-induced PTSD and oh yeah he is also a werewolf and he’s very pretty and smart and I’d like him to choke-fuck me into next week”?

Easy. You don’t.

 

* * *

 

“Excuse me, um, Captain?”

Steve let out an aggressively long sigh and turned to face the speaker, who stood timidly in the door of the conference room clutching a Red Bull. “Parker. We’ve been over this. You can call me Steve when we’re not on a mission.”

“Yeah, okay,” Peter said, the words spilling out of him like coins in a cartoon lottery, “I just figured, like, that’s your _rank_ , and some people like to be known by their titles outside of combat, or if they’re royalty, like, the queen, but I’m not going to call you ‘sir’ unless you’d want that, and, but _Mr. Rogers_ doesn’t really suit you, unless we put you in a cardigan and I don’t think your shoulders would fit -”

“What do you want, Peter?” Steve said, trying to not make his voice go into Serious Adult territory, but also hiding the urge to laugh, because this kid just always tried so goddamn hard.

“Anyway. Uh. So. Yesterday. The thing in Des Moines. I noticed something when we were all headed off the quinjet.” Peter slipped into the seat next to Steve, who immediately winced, because of all the fucking seats to sit at at this long conference table, he had to pick the one right next to him? “You. You and Barnes.” He scrunched up his face like he was already regretting what he was about to ask. “There’s something going on there?”

Steve felt his stomach instantly slosh to the bottom of his butt. “What.”

“I mean -” Peter held up his hands in defense, probably because the look on Steve’s face was the same one he gave members of Hydra right before he sent them to a hot tub in Hell. “I’m just saying, like, you _looked_ at him. And yeah, everyone looks at each other, it’s a mission, it’d be weird if nobody looked at each other, we’d all be fumbling around like _Black Box_ , which by the way, have you seen that movie? It’s so -”

“I’m going to make your _life_ a Black Box if you don’t get to the point,” Steve growled.

“You’ve got the thirst,” Peter blurted out.

Huh.

“What.”

Peter squinted, relieved he was still alive. “Yeah. You’re thirsty for Barnes. It’s like you want him, and it’s like, when you really need something to drink and then you see a big water fountain. Only it’s Barnes. Barnes is the fountain. And I think you should just, like, _go_ for it.” He smiled, all fifteen year old sincerity. “Drink up.”

“...You want me to drink Agent Barnes, Parker.”

“Well...not in like, _that_ way, when you put it that way it’s pretty gross, but-”

“I appreciate your concern, Parker,” he said, putting a hand on Parker’s shoulder. Bless him, he didn’t have the intelligence to flinch. “And I like that terminology. But I think you should leave the room, or I’m going to put your legs in the garbage disposal.”

 

* * *

 

Once Parker had scrambled away, Steve walked to the elevator and headed to the lab. He knew Tony and Bruce would be doing research on Barnes’ DNA, and anything to keep his mind off what Parker had said would be more than good enough for him at that present moment.

He wasn't this rock of ancient knowledge; he did know how the internet worked. Hell, he'd used "yeet" in a group chat and he thought Tony's head would explode. But this feeling? As much as Parker was hilariously bad at timing most of the time, Steve had to give credit to the kid. "Thirsty" was a good word for what Steve felt.

When he got down to the lab he saw Barnes standing in the middle of the floor, arms outstretched, dressed in nothing but a tight red pair of boxer briefs, a laser shining down the center of his body.

 

“Cap!” Tony greeted him, taking off his glasses. “Just the man we were looking for.”

“I. Urm.” Steve bit the inside of his mouth hard enough he worried he’d chew his cheek off, and leaned against the doorjamb in a mockery of nonchalance. “What’s going on?”

Tony looked at him quizzically. “Scanning Barnes. We do it every other week to see if there’s any changes. Remember?”

“Oh. Oh yes. Definitely.”

“Post-Hydra, Barnes still had their genetic modifications running through his veins. Those have seemed to fade as he’s acclimated to life beyond Zola’s control.” Bruce pushed his glasses up his nose. “I wanted to see if his werewolf genetic coding had altered at all as Hydra’s influence dies down.”

Barnes, avoiding Steve’s gaze, looked straight down at the floor. His body, for all its long smooth lines and musculature, almost seemed slight in the flourescent laboratory light.

Steve wanted to follow the light as it glazed over the pop of his shoulders, the striation of his tricep, the delicate hang of his hands as they lay plaintively at his sides, the lines of his stomach.

He snapped his head up to avoid putting his gazes where he most wanted to go, the small fuzz of hair peeking out over the waistband of Barnes’s briefs.

Steve wondered, just for a moment, what Barnes’s hard cock would look like in that underwear. Would it hang out the side or would Barnes let it peek over the top, staining the band with precome, before Steve slid his hand to cup it, massaging the blood hot skin-

“Mgh,” he said instead.

Barnes looked up, a smile lightly dancing over his face. “I do this once or twice a week, but I never get any visitors. This is fun.”

“Well, I think there’s something to be said for ‘fun’ when you’re a werewolf,” Bruce said mildly, before switching off the computer in front of him. “I’m good here, James.”

Something in Steve’s gut went fire-white at that. Bruce can call him James. James. _James._

“Well, any changes?” Barnes - _James_ \- ambled over to a pile of clothes that lay on an examining table. He pulled his pants on, and Steve had never hated a pair of jeans more.

“Not really. Everything seems very stable. Although you haven’t shifted into your furs since you joined the team, and I think that’s the only thing we’ll need to test.”

“How would you do that?”

“By shifting, of course.” Bruce narrowed his eyes at Steve.

“What...what is that like?” Steve inched closer to the table Barnes had hopped onto. “I don’t know anything about that.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Barnes looked over, and allowed his eyes to drag up and down Steve’s body in a way so proprietary, so positively _possessive_ , that Steve wanted to look away but he couldn’t. “It seems like you do.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong. Steve knew what it felt like to transform. “Does it hurt?”

“It did after Hydra caught me. After I was on my own, my body, my furs…” Bucky shrugged his shoulders as if someone were pinching the space at the base of his neck. “It hurt. Yeah. But after a while, especially after I got here, it stopped hurting. Definitely doesn’t hurt now.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” Barnes kept looking over Steve’s body. Steve watched as Barnes sank his teeth into that plush bottom lip, considering his next statement. “It feels like coming home,” he said finally, in that warmly rough voice.

What to say to that? Nothing, really. Steve just let his own gaze wander down to the seams of Barnes’s jeans, particularly the one that ran up from his ankle and past his knee.

He wanted to trace the line with his tongue, get on his knees and get fucked every single way invented. Hell, invent some new ones so he could have more time underneath or on top of Barnes. He’d have Barnes, let Barnes have him, any way, any time.

God, he was a sick bastard, lusting after Barnes when he was being tested in Bruce’s lab.

But Barnes seemed totally happy to receive such a look. He had a twinkle in his eye, or so Steve assumed, and the smile on his face only grew when Steve looked away, the heat in his cheeks increasing with every filthy thought.

He bubbled out some excuse about going to see Pepper (“don’t tell her I have a werewolf in here, she’ll want to babysit or feed him cookies!” Tony yelled) and stumbled out of the lab and back into the elevator. Once inside he pressed his back against the wall and urged himself to stay calm, to stay grounded. It was either that or palm himself through his pants right then and there. But Tony had security cameras everywhere in this goddamn place. Steve could wait until he got back to his rooms.

Steve could imagine Barnes telling him to wait. Telling him to save it, to save it for him. That he was being so good, that Barnes wanted to reward him for making him wait, for taking the torture so sweetly.

The shower Steve took later that night was ice cold.

 

* * *

 

The next time Steve saw Barnes, he was speaking quietly with Wanda in the compound kitchen, over big mugs of something that sent steam up into the air. Barnes said something, and Wanda let out a laugh. Steve had never heard her make that particular laugh before. It was light and airy, when so much of her was so grounded, almost hinging on unbearably somber. Sure, Vision had made her smile, but this was a community laugh, a friendship laugh.

In that moment, Steve thanked whatever it was that brought Barnes to their team, for getting Wanda to laugh.

They both looked up at Steve's footsteps. Steve stopped. “ I didn't mean to-”

“No no,”  Wanda said. She slid off her stool. “We were just talking.” Even the way she moved, the way she carried herself, it all seemed to have shifted in the time since Barnes joined the team.  

Steve wondered how long it had been since this change has taken root. Was it something that had been incrementally happening? Or was it like when you take a deep sudden breath, after bursting forth from drowning?  After being awoken from ice?

“Shared life experiences,” Barnes said, the corner of his mouth quirked up into a soft smile. He held out his mug with his flesh hand. “Want some? It’s rooibos.”

Steve leaned in and smelled warm vanilla and cinnamon, keeping his eyes closed so he didn’t focus on Barnes’ fingers, long and pianist-like. “Smells good,” he murmured, before rocking back on his heels. “Would love some.”

Wanda slipped behind Steve; Steve felt the ghost of her hand on his back. “I’m going to check in on Viz, see how that mission in Guatemala is doing.” Something in her voice made Steve look back at her, and the sly twinkle in her eye caused him to look down at his shoes.

When she was gone, Steve turned to Barnes, who was putting water in the kettle. “Have you been settling in all right?” he asked. It seemed safe to have that sort of a conversation.

“Well enough,” Barnes replied as he opened the cabinet to find the box of teas, probably next to the piles of coffee and green herbal stuff Tony and Bruce drank. “Do you think the team would want any of this, since I’m making some?”

“Nah. Nat presses her own dark roast in her rooms.” A ritual she had learned in the Red Room and was reticent to give up. “Clint - well, I’m pretty sure whatever he drinks is mixed with gasoline.”

“Sounds right to me,” Barnes said, a little chuckle escaping his mouth that curled around Steve’s bones like smoke.

He watched as Barnes placed the kettle on the stove and laid a sachet into a mug that twinned Wanda’s. “I hope Tony and Bruce aren’t riding you too hard - I mean, you know. Uh.”

_'Riding.' Oh Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, come and take me now, just stick a flaming sword in my side and drag me off to hell._

Barnes seemed to not notice Steve’s linguistic crisis and hummed under his breath, settling down on his chair at the table. “I don’t mind. Whatever helps, you know? I just want to be of use.”

Something in Barnes’ voice snapped Steve out of his self-loathing. “What?”

“You know.” Barnes held out his arm, waved the metal fingers. “I’m not a magical creature, Rogers. I’m not some sort of deus ex machina that’s going to help you and your team figure out every single piece of some old as fuck puzzle.” Flesh hands stroked circles into the tabletop. “I had a life, a family, a pack. They were taken from me. I was taken from me. And now I just want to burn them all to the ground if they think they’re going to take apart any more families.”

“We’ll help you. It’s the least we can do. We try to, at least. Help people.”

“You know, I haven’t known you for too long, but I can tell that every single thing I’ve heard about you from the team is true.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well,” Barnes sat back, smiling a little bigger, tinged with some slick glee, “you never give up on anybody. Not even when you probably should.

“You’re a really bad judge of when to stop, you’ll just barge full speed ahead into anything, damn the consequences.

“And,” Barnes leaned in now, and Steve suddenly forgot how to breathe, “a bit of surrender would do you very good indeed.”

The kettle began to gently hum. Steve and Barnes didn’t move. They stared at each other as the noise built to a low, insistent scream, before Barnes broke first and got up to take it off the heat. He gently poured the scalding water into the mug before lifting it and sliding it to Steve, who sat frozen like a statue. “You’re going to want to let that sit,” he whispered. “Or you’ll burn your tongue.”

At that moment Barnes could’ve upended the entire kettle onto Steve’s head and he wouldn’t have felt a thing, except for maybe the transcendent joy of annealing fire.

 

* * *

 

Over the next few evenings, it became something of a ritual for Steve. He’d walk into the kitchen, find Barnes drinking tea, and before Steve could quite figure out what to make of it all, he and Barnes would find themselves talking into the deep hours of the night. The tea would eventually grow cold, but the two men would linger. In those hours Steve found out quite a lot about Barnes. First, his pack was known as the Walking Shadows. “My ma told me our elders liked Shakespeare a lot,” he said, blushing as he did.

Second, aside from the toxic first arm crafted for him by Hydra, Barnes had only been hit with silver once in his life. “I was on a mission in Greece and got sniped. I want all of them to die, but if it weren’t for them, I don’t think I would have survived.” He motioned to his left leg. “I still have a bit of scarring. Would’ve been worse if Zola hadn’t wanted me out in the field as soon as possible. I was back on another mission within three days.”

Steve clenched and loosened his hands.

Third, that he missed his family more than anything. “I don’t know if any of them are still alive,” he said, staring into the cold recesses of his mug. “My sister, Rebecca - she might be. Never found out about what happened to her.”

“We could find out,” Steve suggested, but Barnes shook his head.

“No,” he said, a wistful glint to his eyes. “She wouldn’t want that. She’d rather roam. She was always the independent type. Plus, she’d kill me if she knew I was alive and didn’t contact her sooner.”

On the seventh night, Steve got up the courage to ask Barnes about his furs. “I didn’t want you to think I’m talking to you just because of that,” he insisted.

Barnes grinned, his shoulders relaxed. “Don’t worry. I’ve dealt with Tony for the past few weeks. I can handle your questions.”

“Do you miss it at all? Do you get a chance to, uh…” Steve motioned to the door, to the woods that lay beyond the compound.

Barnes seemed to get Steve’s fumbling at reasoning, and shrugged. “Sometimes I do. But usually very late at night, when everyone is asleep. Or I have a space in Tony’s lab where I can run around. But that’s where they run tests.” He cocked his head. “Not the same, if you get my drift.”

“I think I do.”

"Yeah. Yeah I bet you do." Barnes leaned back in his chair and studied Steve for a moment. “You want to see it, don’t you?”

Steve’s chest seized up, but Barnes shrugged, eyes crinkling as he grinned. “Well,” he drawled. “We’ll just have to see about that, won’t we?”

On the fourth night, as Steve said good night, Barnes shot a hand out and touched his arm. Steve had to clench every muscle to keep from exploding at the pure chill that escalated up his flesh. “Something wrong?”

“No. It’s just…” Barnes studied the grooves on the table before continuing. “My ma called me Bucky. You can too, if you want.”

“I mean, only if you’re sure,” Steve stuttered, incredulous. “I don’t want to if you think you, you have to-”

“I want to.” Barnes - Bucky - gave Steve a smile so small and shy it threatened to tear Steve to pieces.

 

* * *

 

 

The soft alert came at 2:36 a.m. “Captain Rogers?”

Steve blearily searched in the dark for the light. “Who is it?”

“Mr. Barnes has asked me to send for you.” 

Steve was instantly awake. “Status?”

“He asked me to send for you and that he’ll be waiting in the woods behind the compound. He said to bring your shield.” Even though F.R.I.D.A.Y. had a different ‘personality’ than J.A.R.V.I.S., there was still that wink behind every gently metallic phrase.

 

* * *

 

His heart was pounding. The last time Steve was this nervous, it was probably back in the 40s when he screwed up his courage to ask Millie Thomas to the Expo. She’d turned him down, but it was the kindest rejection he’d ever gotten.

This? This was...this was that feeling times one hundred thousand, as Steve carefully made his way into the woods, aware of every footfall on the grass, every crunch of sticks under his boots. The air around him was cool, and deadly silent. Not even the crickets were singing.

So the sudden noise to his left was even more noticeable. When Steve turned and saw, he nearly dropped his shield.

Peering from behind a tree was a magnificent, silver-colored wolf, with eyes as blue as the summer sky. His front left leg was brilliant silver, the same as his arm when he was in his human skin

That same freezing cold, heart stopping feeling stole over STeve, the same one that nearly overtook him the first time he saw Bucky. But now? Now he was faced with what Bucky actually was. An animal? No. That would be too small for what Steve was looking at. What Steve was looking at was the most perfect example of humanity.

Nat had said to Steve once that in Russia, the more you make someone’s name into a diminutive the more you meant it as a term of endearment. “It’s like if someone called you Stevie,” she said, then laughed at the look on Steve’s face. “What? I think it’d be cute.”

“Nobody has ever called me Stevie,” Steve said petulantly. “That sounds like something a child gets called.

“But it means someone finds you precious in that way,” Nat insisted. “Trust me. If you do that, or if someone does that, it means something.”

“Has anyone done that to you?”

“Yeah. But it’s different when people in the Red Room do it.” And Nat didn’t speak on the subject again. Steve didn’t want to find out.

But now, in this moment?

“Hey, Buck,” he said.

The wolf cocked his head, and came closer. An answer. Steve held his position, shield dangling loosely at his side. He could hear Tony yelling in his head about how dangerous this all was, that maybe Bucky was luring him into the forest late at night for a quick game of Eat The Supersoldier. Maybe he was asking for it, the way he was dying to ask for it in all the ways Bucky would give it to him.

Soft, thick fur slipped over his hand and Steve stopped thinking about Tony. Bucky’s maw was gentle as it nudged and nosed, saying hello without ever speaking. Steve sank to his knees, and the wolf didn’t move. Steve raised a hand, slowly, delicately, and placed it on the arch of the wolf’s spine. “This okay?” he asked, still keeping his voice just slightly above a whisper. The wolf hung his head as a sign of surrender, then pushed up and bumped Steve’s cheek.

Steve let out a sound perilously close to a squeak. “Okay. Okay.” He moved his hand up, stroking the soft fur. He had no idea that a werewolf’s fur could be like this. It was different than when he petted Lucky, Clint’s dog (although he was definitely never telling Clint that, Clint would cut his head off). Lucky’s fur was short and bristly. This? This was smooth and fluffy, while at the same time almost sleek. Maybe Steve was going insane.

Maybe he didn’t care.

He stood, as gently and slowly as he could let himself, and held out his shield. “You wanted this?”

The wolf took a few steps back, eyes focused on Steve, and nodded his head before pawing at the ground. It took a second before what the wolf wanted really hit Steve, and he almost gasped out a laugh. “You want to play _catch_?!”

The wolf didn’t respond. He just waited. Steve scrubbed a hand over his face in disbelief. “You’re a piece of work, Buck, you know that?”

The wolf came up to Steve’s side and pressed his nose into Steve’s leg. That was all Steve needed to see, needed to feel. He’d do whatever Bucky wanted him do, any time, any place.

“All right, buddy,” he said quietly, before turning and jogging a few steps back. “Do you need a warmup?”

And even though it was impossible, Steve swore the wolf rolled his eyes.

He chuckled, and shook his head. “Okay. Fine, you jerk. But you asked for this.” He reared his hand back, and before he could throw the shield, the wolf was gone. Faster than a blaze of light, darting amongst the trees. As if he were saying to Steve _yes, throw it as hard and as fast as you want, I’ll catch it, I’ll catch it every time_.

A true match.

Steve’s heart blossomed high and full. He breathed, and hurled the shield as hard and as fast as he dared.

There was silence, save for the wind and the hum of vibranium slicing through the pathway left by the trees, followed swiftly by a _kang!_ of the shield hitting a like metal.

Steve took off, running hard through the trees, following the same path Bucky took, and came across a small clearing. His jaw dropped.

The wolf stood tall and proud, the shield underneath his paws, one flesh, one silver. He saw Steve, and craned his head to the sky, letting out a triumphant howl.

It was in that moment that Steve knew he was in love with James Barnes, both the man, and the werewolf.

 

*

Hours later, they came back to the compound, Steve sweating and exhilarated, the wolf sleepy and happy, tongue lolling out of his mouth like he’d just been for a casual walk instead of a nonstop game of hyper-enhanced Frisbee. He never left Steve’s side, not even when they got into the elevator, and Steve looked down at the wolf inquisitively. “You want me to drop you off at your floor? That’s totally fine.”

The wolf paused, and looked at Steve for a moment, and then suddenly it wasn’t a wolf at all anymore. It was Bucky, sweating and luminescent even under the elevator light. Steve nearly jumped out of his skin. “Bucky?”

“Take me to your floor,” Bucky said, voice a low gravelly whisper.

It was only then Steve realized that one thing he had heard about werewolves was true - much like Bruce, Bucky couldn’t bring his clothes along for the shift back into human skin.

Bucky was naked, and sweating, practically aglow. It looked like he had fire spiking his blood. It matched the warmth racing along Steve’s veins.

“Are you sure-”

“Jesus Christ, punk, I’ve been sure since the moment I first met you,” Bucky whispered, before pinning Steve to the wall of the elevator and kissing him.

*

The elevators in the compound opened directly into that floor’s rooms. Good thinking on Tony’s part, Steve thought numbly as he shook in Bucky’s arms to the rhythm of the _ding_.

They stumbled inside, Bucky snapping and undoing Steve’s shirt and belt and pants with immediacy that would be terrifying if Steve wasn’t so rock hard. He ran his hands over Bucky’s slick back and shoulders, marveling that this was the body he could finally touch, could finally take in all of this splendour he’d looked at from afar for all these weeks. Somewhere, he knew, Sam was fistpumping and also thanking God that the compound floors were soundproofed. All of those desires that had been at the back of his mind, the sheer want of Bucky, the feeling of conquering and being conquered, came roaring back with a frenzy that nearly toppled his insides as they fell into the bedroom, Steve’s back once again finding a wall as Bucky crushed him, hip to hip, the insistence of his hard cock nudging at Steve’s inner thigh (which was suddenly, deliciously bare; when had Bucky taken off his pants and boxers?).

“Did you want to shower?” he mumbled through wet kisses. Bucky pulled off and stared at him in amused consternation.

“I don’t think I can wait that long, Stevie,” he murmured.

_Stevie._

Steve sank to his knees, making sure to slide against every part of Bucky’s body as he did so, until he was eye level with Bucky’s cock. It was -

“Damn,” he murmured. “You got any idea how long I’ve wanted to do this?”

“I have a good idea; first time I saw you, you looked at me like, like you wanted me to eat you alive - _fuck_ ,” Bucky groaned as Steve pressed a kiss to the underside of Bucky’s cock before licking a wet stripe up the thick, beautiful vein. Bucky's dick was _perfect,_ slightly curved, and a beautiful shade of rose pink. It was also, Steve noted with a frisson of warmth up his spine, thick enough that it would probably hurt in the morning.

_Good. Let it hurt. Let it hurt all over. Let me feel it for a week. A month. The rest of my life._

When Steve got to the swollen, oversized head, he paused, and dipped his tongue at the slit to lap up the pearled precome gathering there. Bucky twitched, and Steve huffed out a breath of satisfaction at the response.

He pulled off just enough to look up at Bucky, and wrapped his hand around his cock. “I was thinking about this,” he said softly, lips just inches away from blood-hot skin. “Wanted you to take me right there. In front of everyone. Didn’t care who you were, what you were. All I wanted was for you to make me yours.”

“Would’ve been worth it for the look on Tony’s face,” Bucky said with a strained edge to his voice. He moved his flesh hand down to cup Steve’s cheek, and Steve fought back the urge to nuzzle into it the way Bucky had when he was a wolf. “I wanted that too. But now...now you look at me and you see all of me.”

“I will always see all of you,” Steve promised, as solemn as anything he’d ever said, and fit his mouth around Bucky’s dick before Bucky could respond. No more talk, at least not about anything else but this.

“Jesus, Stevie, baby,” Bucky moaned, putting his metal hand on the wall and pressing forward hard enough that Steve thought about how hilarious it would be to tell Tony they needed to patch up a bit of the wall due to an enthusiastic blowjob. It just made his machinations all the more energetic, and before long, Bucky’s hips were pulsing back and forth as his cock slid into Steve’s mouth, then out, then in at an increasing pace until Steve felt his mind leave his body, that all he could be, all he would ever be, was a hole for Bucky to fuck into, that all he ever wanted to be was at the service of this man who was more than a man, who was fire and ice and shadow and light, who was man and myth and monster and miracle.

He quickly came back into his own senses when Bucky pulled his cock away from his mouth. “Shhhh,” he said when Steve protested, and pulled Steve up by the arms, spun him, and slammed him up against the wall. “My turn,” he growled.

Steve practically presented himself. He had read about this, about how when animals mated, they presented their bodies for the taking. He wondered if Bucky would get the hint. Judging by the low sounds Bucky was making, he certainly did, and Steve smiled even as Bucky gently but firmly kissed his way down his body before using his metal arm to force Steve’s legs open with an insistence that made Steve’s whole body shudder.

Steve let out a cry as Bucky spat into the crease of his ass, but that was nothing compared to the feel of Bucky’s hot, wet tongue splitting his cheeks and dipping into furled muscle of his hole. Everything threatened to explode behind Steve’s vision, and he closed his eyes and leaned up against the wall, pushing his ass into Bucky’s face, letting himself be entirely devoured.

“So sweet,” he heard Bucky mumble, and he smiled to himself, letting his ass slide up and down on the weight of Bucky’s tongue as it slipped past the first ring of muscle, fucking himself on it, losing any ability to see anything beyond what was happening in the right now, in the exact moment, in the space between breaths and movement and Bucky’s _tongue_ , god _damn_ , there should be a monument to it in DC, not that imperialist slave-owner, this should be memorialized for all to see, but also, _never_ , because dammit, Steve will never not be selfish.

Before he could even acquiesce to the sensation, Steve felt air and emptiness where once Bucky had been. He groaned, but before he could miss it, he felt Bucky press up against him again, only this time, instead of Bucky’s tongue it was his cock, pushing insistently through the loosened ring (how long had Bucky been opening him up? Steve had absolutely no idea. Time didn’t fucking _exist_ anymore).

He moved a hand around to press at the swell of Bucky’s ass, pushing him in and pulling him out, but Bucky slapped it away and pinned his hands to the wall using one flesh, one metal. “Don’t move,” he hissed into the curve of Steve’s ear, before licking the fragile shell of his lobe. “Don’t you fucking move."

"Tell me what you want," Steve said, arching up and back to get more feeling, more touch. "What do you want?"

_"I want to use you."_

And it took every single ounce of military training and Avengers discipline Steve possessed to not come right then and there. He knew Bucky would want him to wait. To be good. To behave.

Maybe later, much later, he would ask Bucky to wring him dry. But right now, this needed to last.

So he closed his eyes and breathed, and let Bucky do whatever he fucking wanted. This seemed to please Bucky, who leaned back in and whispered, “Good, baby,” before pulling back and fucking him so hard Steve wondered if he would actually die.  

Steve let out a sound that would’ve embarrassed him in any other capacity. In this moment, it shaped him, molded him into something more base than he’d ever allowed himself to be. If there were such a thing as true freedom, Steve had found it here. Nothing else was important, everything had dialed down to the sound of Bucky’s breath on his neck, the sweat dripping off Bucky’s forehead onto the small of his back, and the insistent push and pull, the suction, the wet sound of Bucky’s cock, of Bucky fucking Steve.

He didn’t quite remember coming, all he could think about was Bucky’s thrusts getting even more rough and insistent, and himself saying “Yes” over and over again, at a louder and louder decibel, until his throat was raw. Had he been screaming? Maybe.

When it was over, Bucky leaned up against Steve, body moving in and out with short bursts of inhales and exhales. Steve pressed his forehead against the wall, unsure of what even to do in the aftermath. What to do, when your whole world has exploded?

In the midst of the ringing in his ears, he heard Bucky mumble something. “Hm?” he asked, throat sore.

A pause, and then Bucky nudged Steve’s neck. “Thank you,” he said. Uncertainty clouded his voice.

Steve pitched forward, hissing slightly as Bucky’s cock slipped out of him, and turned to face Bucky. “Thank _you_ ,” he said softly, and framed Bucky’s face with his hands. “Not just for this. But for...for showing me who you are.”

“I trusted you. And I'm glad that trust was not misplaced."

"It won't be."

"I know," Bucky said simply, and leaned in.

Their kiss this time was soft, bordering on tremulous. A shape of things to follow.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
